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I’m driving from Colorado to Wyoming to fish the upper Green River. The sun is going down and I’ve just passed over Flaming Gorge when I come upon this view. I stop the car and walk out to the edge. The car door is open and Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” is blaring. The wind is cold at my back and strong enough that I have to lean into it, like it’s saying, go on, do it. I have goose bumps. It feels like a perfect moment. It makes me think of Spalding Gray. Sad, I feel sure he had one more perfect moment left in him. Maybe this all sounds pretty fruity if you weren’t there but it reminds me that it’s easy to get so focused on the fishing and the shooting photos that I miss the perfect moments. Look up from the water once in a while. Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com

Thumbing through the latest Fly Fisherman Magazine recently, I read an article about lightning safety while fly fishing. It was packed full of good safety advice, and I recognized the familiar photo of Louis’s, with our friend Brad on the Gros Ventre River with a lightning strike in the background. I tagged along with the two of them that day, and I’ll never forget how close we all came to being struck by lighting. My finger tips were literally tingling with electricity, which brings me to the purpose of this post. You got to know when to fold um when your out fishing. When weather gets nasty and life threatening, don’t be a hardcore idiot. End the day short to ensure you have the opportunity to come back and fish another day. When you get back to the truck and open that cold beer, you’ll know you made the right decision. Keep it Reel, Kent Klewein Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com

I’ve heard salt water fly fishing described as long periods of boredom punctuated by brief periods of panic. I don’t know that I find staring at miles of gorgeous flats boring but I’ve felt that panic a time or two. It’s a stalking game and when the fish show up, shit happens fast. You often only get one shot and the last thing you need is a line maintenance issue. That’s why you need to make a clearing cast. Start by striping as much line as you can cast off of your reel on to the deck. Because the line you are pulling off of the reel stacks on top of the line coming form the guides, when you try to cast you will be shooting line from the bottom of the pile and it will tangle every time. Like in the photo above. Not what you want when your casting to a fish and certainly not once you’ve fed one. So before you start hunting fish, cast all of that line and strip it back in. Now your stalking your line back to front. Lay it out in nice loose loops, neatly across the deck and into the cockpit, like the photo below. When you get your shot your line will shoot clean and smooth. Check out Bruce’s site. Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com

Guiding has allowed me the opportunity to examine lots of my clients fly boxes over the years. Quite often I open a fly box and just find a bunch of bream poppers and traditional old school attractor wet flies. I know it sounds crazy but it’s the reality in my region of work. I pause for a few seconds scanning their box intently, and try to give the impression they didn’t waist their money trying to stock their fly box at the local Walmart. I then quickly reply, “No worries, I’ve got plenty of flies that will work today for you”. Seriously though, even when I actually get an angler with a decent selection of usable fly patterns in his/her fly box, I consistently notice one fly pattern that’s absent time and time again. The soft-hackle hares ear is the missing fly I’m referring to here, and although it’s just as deadly at catching fish as its cousin the soft-hackle pheasant-tail, for some reason rookie and intermediate level fly fishermen aren’t being told to stock them. Try fishing a tandem nymph rig with a soft-hackle pheasant-tail trailed behind by a soft-hackle hares ear next time you’re on the water. Day in and day out one of these patterns will be on the trout menu because of their impressionistic buggy features. Once you find out which pattern the fish prefer you can then fine tune your nymph rig further. Keep it Reel, Kent Klewein Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@kent-klewein.com

Here are three reports from last weekends Denver Carp Slam. Ummmmm, tasty! The Denver Carp Slam, This Is Not Your Father’s TU When was the last time you attended a Trout Unlimited event where a bottle rocket fight broke out? That was the scene last weekend when I attended the Denver Carp Slam, as an observer, not to fish. The Carp Slam is a carp tournament started five years ago by the Denver chapter of Trout Unlimited. It takes place on the South Platte in downtown Denver and the proceeds pay for stream improvements on the river. The Platte, at least the stretch that runs through Denver, is truly a challenged river. OK, that’s too polite. It’s severally F’ed up. Full of trash, dead animals, murder weapons, and amazingly, fish. Carp of coarse but also walleye, smallmouth bass, catfish, and to my surprise, trout. Not in big numbers but pretty good size. That’s where TU comes in. They’re using the carp, to save the trout. It’s a great cause and a great time but most of all, a great bunch of guys. The group is young, energetic and energized about their mission but not taking life too seriously. The experience renewed my faith in TU. I am particularly interested in a group who call them selves The Greenbacks. A group of young TU members on a mission to preserve Colorado’s native fish, and have a good time doing it. Their enthusiasm is contagious. It’s awesome to see a great old institution alive with wish youthful vigor. Hats off to the Denver chapter of TU. Natural Born Carper While photographing the Denver Carp Slam I witnessed something strange and wonderful. The slam is a “pro am” event. Sixteen teams consisting of one pro and one amateur compete to put the most … Continue reading →

Like many anglers, I enjoy a friendly competition on the water with my buddies. However, if you get too wrapped up in the competition aspect, often it can get out of hand and ruin your day of fishing. These days I try to forget about competition and who’s catching what. It’s just not important to me anymore, and I instead prefer to focus on teamwork. Teamwork usually yields better fishing results anyway, and it also seems to build camaraderie much better than competition. Below are three reasons I choose teamwork over competition in my fishing. 1. Working as team on the water allows you to dial into the current fishing conditions much quicker. 2. Using a one spotter and one caster team approach caters to more effective spot and stalk fishing. 3. A spotter can provide valuable feedback to the caster on how fish are relating to fly pattern choice and presentation. Keep it Reel, Kent Klewein Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com

I am planning my presentation to at, least, the one hundredth fish of the day. For the record i have had one look and no eats. It’s not quite lunch time. I look down at my feet to be sure I’m not standing on my line and notice a spent shotgun shell. I’m thinking, “yeah, that’s the way to do this”. I recently had the great pleasure of spending a day carp fishing with my friend Bruce Smithhamer. It was every bit as challenging as promised. The fish were gearing up for the spawn and were lock jawed. We would have gone fish-less if not for Bruce’s encyclopedic knowledge of the species. We changed locations and tactics several times and eventually got into fish. Carp, especially Mirror Carp, are a remarkable fish. Their color and scale patterns are reminiscent of classical Japanese painting. Their eye sight is excellent and there hearing quite acute. They are even able to communicate danger to other carp by releasing a pheromone in to the water. Their behavior is unpredictable except that they will refuse more often than eat. Perhaps their most remarkable quality is their ability to completely ruin a good trout fisherman. I’ve seen several guys go down this road and few come back. They started out just curious about this carp thing and maybe went out and tried it with a friend and now their totally hooked. Couldn’t quit if they wanted too. Bruce is one of those guys. He guides for trout on some of the best water in the world and when he has a day off you find him staking the banks of a carp lake. He tells me. “All I want to do is sight cast to big fish in shallow water.” Can you blame him? Bruce tells … Continue reading →

On the road to to New Orleans I spotted this warning sign on a semi truck so I pulled along side and took a photo with my IPhone. It’s a funny photo but a stark reminder of how fragile our fisheries are. It strikes me that we are always one careless moment from ecological disaster. We saw it last month on the Yellowstone. I don’t mean to be all “doom and gloom” but Yikes! Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com

I can remember like it was yesterday jumping my first big tarpon in the Florida Keys. One hundred plus pounds of fish completely leaping out of the water and crashing down like a free falling Volkswagen Bug. That image will forever be burned into my memory. The only problem is I didn’t end up landing that tarpon. To be brutally honest, my hook set totally sucked donkey balls. I know what your thinking. I’m a trout guide, and I probably set the hook like I was trying to hook a trout, right? Yes, I’ve done that before, but my mistake this time was only setting the hook once. Below are five tips for getting better hookups with tarpon, provided by Capt. Joel Dickey. 4 Tips for Getting Better Hookups With Tarpon 1. Keep your rod tip on the water and always point it in the direction of your fly line and fly during your retrieve. Not pointing your rod tip at your fly line and fly often results in adding unwanted slack between you and the fish. This small amount of slack will increase your chances of not getting a solid hook set. You also will find it hard to feel the bite. 2. Use a 100% strip set when setting the hook. You can apply far more pressure and power in a hook set with a firm strip set than you can with the fly rod. Many novice saltwater anglers make the mistake of thinking the power comes from the fly rod. 3. Set the hook multiple times for better hook penetration. When a tarpon eats from left or right often a single hook set will be adequate because a lot of the time the weight of the fish moving aids in setting the hook. However, when you … Continue reading →

With all of the research and development that goes into rods, reels and every fishing gadget under the sun, it surprises me that it’s taken so long for boots to go high tech. Up until a few years ago my wading boots were amazingly similar to what my grandfather wore. It wasn’t until Korkers came out with the revolutionary Boa lace design and interchangeable soles that everyone in the business took a serious look down. Those boots had some controversial features but since I put the first pair on my feet,I’ve waded in nothing else. Years ago I broke my ankle in a pair of boxy old school wading boots and that memory has staid with me. As important to me as my ankles, is the thousands of dollars of camera gear I carry. For me, a fall can be pretty expensive. In the last couple of years Rubber soles have been all the rage. I’ve heard plenty of my friends in the biz tow the line by saying, “it’s a matter of personal preference”. I don’t know anyone who really believes that rubber is as safe as felt, and more people are coming around to the idea that it’s no more environmentally sound either. IMHO, rubber soles just give folks a warm feeling about not washing their boots. Rubber or felt, you need to wash your boots. There are plenty of places for the rock snot to hide on a rubber boot. I stumbled across a new shoe technology that has been developed for pro basketball players. It was developed by a company called Ektio. It’s pretty interesting. Ankle sprains and brakes are the number one injury in basketball. The Ektio sneaker uses a system of straps and revolutionary sole design that they call a bumper which prevents the … Continue reading →